Tuesday, February 9, 2010

All I want

Mrs. H talks about how dumbing down the educational process through credit recovery is not working. (It doesn't work here either.)

Phillie Teacher says the kids could pass if they would come to school.

Matt Townsley talks about grade pollution. (Does lowering a grade because the kid didn't turn work in accurately reflect what they know.

All of these are concerns I have daily in my classes. Add - I want them to pass, if they are seniors, I want them to graduate, do work even if they think it is tedious (what, they won't have tedious work as adults?), and I want them to clean up their act. I want pants up, hats off, and appropriate vocabulary.

In return, I promise to teach you meaningful concepts so that you can understand them.

Seems fair.
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5 comments:

Matt Townsley said...

"Add - I want them to pass, if they are seniors, I want them to graduate, do work even if they think it is tedious (what, they won't have tedious work as adults?), and I want them to clean up their act. I want pants up, hats off, and appropriate vocabulary."

Two questions:
1) Do your students want to pass? Is it your (our) job to help them pass, even if they don't want to?
2) Is it our job to help keep the pants up and hats off? (My post would argue that, at the very least, these behaviors shouldn't be a part of their grade!) Or is our job primarily to help students learn some sort of content and thinking skills?

February 9, 2010 at 8:10 PM
Ricochet said...

They do want to pass - usually 2 or 3 weeks before the end of the term. It is difficult/impossible to provide a meaningful education that way and yet my administration thinks/tells me it is so (or make it so).

Hats and pants - again, I am told by the administration that I am to write them up.

The argument that is made in so many of these blogs is that the administrations are focusing on the graduation rate and we are being graded on standardized test scores. If we focused on the the tests - on teaching the material the will be tested on and put less emphasis on whether or not they are passing, the pass rate for the class might go down for a brief time but the test scores would go up.

February 10, 2010 at 2:40 AM
Madeleine said...

Our district makes it clear that the bottom line is
1.our Graduation Rate and 2.our standardized test scores: nothing else.

A student can be pushed through to graduation by dumbing down curriculum and second chances like credit recovery. But if he/she graduate under these conditions have they really learned? have we educated them?

What kind of future have we prepared them for?

February 10, 2010 at 7:36 PM
Madeleine said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
February 10, 2010 at 7:36 PM
Matt Townsley said...

Sad. Simply sad.

February 10, 2010 at 8:06 PM

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